After allowing the excitement of the multitude time to find vent, the old Duke gave the twelve heralds a sign, and they hurried into the thick grove of oaks rustling behind the ash-tree. Then he struck the shield, saying: "Justice has now been done according to righteous law and the noble will of the people.

"The judge has done his work: now listen to your Duke, army of the Alemanni!"

Deep silence instantly followed: all eyes rested intently upon Hariowald, who sprang up, took the shield from the tree, slipped it on his left arm, and grasping the spear with his right hand, said from the high stone step, his voice, now in a totally different tone, ringing out with mighty resonance over the people:

"Many of you, I know,--and not the worst spearmen,--have silently dissented or openly grumbled because I have so long delayed leading you to battle. The foe was in the land, and we shrank into the forests; he was burning halls and huts, and we were watching the smoke and flames rise at a distance and remaining inactive. Gradually, even from the farthest districts, the men faithful to the league and obedient to the oath joined us: still the Duke delayed. And meanwhile the enemy was fortifying his camp. Yes, we knew it--any morning from the fortress on the opposite side of the lake the proud galleys might bring almost as many warriors as the camp already contained. Why did the old man still delay? When would he fight?"

"Yes, yes, why delay? When shall we go to battle?" Many voices impatiently repeated.

"He delayed," the Duke went on, his voice rising in tones of thunder, "because he did not wish to strike part, not even half, but all, all, as many as could be reached,--all the murderers, the burners of homes, whom the boy in the imperial purple has again sent from across the lake to attack our free people!

"To-morrow (faithful men reported it to me before the news reached the Roman General), early to-morrow morning the proud galleys will sail across the lake and anchor off the shore close to the camp; and to-morrow, after midnight, old Hariowald will lead you to storm the camp and the ships at the same time!"

Then the long-repressed battle fury broke out in a terrible tumult; frantic shouts and wild clanking of weapons echoed through the air.

"Look," Hariowald continued, "the heralds are already bearing from the sacred grove of the gods of our country, from the mysterious gloom of the forest darkness, never illumined by a sunbeam, the victorious badges of our tribes and districts which they have taken from the ancient oaks."

A shout of joy, somewhat subdued by reverence, greeted the procession of twelve heralds, who now, in pairs, with measured tread, came from beyond the ash-tree and gave the badges to the representatives of the various districts and clans, who stepped forward from the circle to receive them.

Ebarvin seized the symbol of the Ebergau: the boar's head with threatening tusks fastened to a cross-pole on a lofty spear. Adalo grasped a similar shaft, which supported a pair of huge stag's antlers. Almost all the monsters of the primeval forest and the animals sacred to the gods were used in a similar way. Beside the huge horns of the aurochs and the bison rose the broad antlers of the elk. Odin's wolf, Donar's bear, and LÖki's fox opened their jaws threateningly. Zio's sword, pointing straight upward, surmounted a shaft painted blood-red; another had Donar's hammer between two zigzag red lightnings forged from iron; three lances bore each a horse's head and neck, and from the necks the manes--respectively black, red, and brown--still fluttered. On other poles the bald eagle, the golden eagle, and the Alpine vulture spread their wings and extended their talons in attitudes of menace. A winged dragon carved from wood had been covered with the skins of the ring adder and the copper adder, which rustled in the wind. And as, like the manes of the horses, the hair of the wild beasts had been left hanging in a strip from the head to the tail, and long red, yellow, and blue streamers fluttered from the cross-poles, there was no lack of the rustling, waving motion, to which we moderns are accustomed in banners.

Under these streamers was also many a trophy,--a fragment cut from a captured dragon standard, or a scrap of a purple pennon which the Roman squadrons and cohorts had long carried under the labarum or standard of the cross, for they had abjured the pagan eagles.

When the representatives of the districts and families had received their beloved and honored emblems and returned to the ranks, the Duke went on:

"Hail to you, ancient symbols of conflict and witnesses of victory! Hail and greeting, ye emblems consecrated to the gods! In your presence, looking into the future, seized by the power of the gods invisibly hovering around you, I will venture to utter a prophecy:

"Comrades in arms, Alemanni! do not doubt this time that victory will be ours. You know that it is not the custom of old Hariowald to boast before acting: but this time I predict to you certain, complete, glorious, joyous victory.

"All our gods will unite to aid us to-morrow. Not least of them LÖki, the flame-creator. Tents and ships will vanish in fire. The lake nymph will drag many hundreds down in her net. The terrible earth-goddess will open her mysterious bosom, on which the insolent aliens have trodden with iron feet: she will pour forth the avengers, the sons of her country, into the midst of the enemy's strongest fortress! For the Lofty One blinded the hated foe, so that they chose in our whole district the spot for their camp most fatal to them. And when they fly from the tents to the galleys, amid the terrors of the night, by the flickering glare of their burning fortifications--they will find on the lake the same destruction in fire and blood.

"If the last of the flying ships, with masts and prows half burned, pursued and harried by our swift boats, should really succeed in reaching the southern shore and the harbor fortress from which they sailed forth so victoriously, who knows--I will not say more--who knows whether they may not find there an unexpected doom?

"No! Silence still! Hear me to the end.

"Before I dissolve the assembly and send you all to prepare your weapons in the best way, to polish the points and blades, and to eat and drink enough,--not over much, then afterwards--do you hear--to seek sleep soon, very soon, for you will have no slumber to-morrow night--hear one thing more: you must make one resolve before this battle!

"Remember, men, how from generation to generation these Romans have sinned against our people; how again and again they have broken faith and treaty; how they will not even grant us the poor land we have wrested from the marsh and the primeval forest; how, in violation of treaties, they have pushed their fortresses farther and farther into our boundaries; how they forced thousands of our ancestors to fight naked and unarmed with wild beasts on the blood-stained sand of their arenas in the city by the Tiber, gloating, safe in their high seats, over the death-agonies of our kinsmen under the paws and rent by the teeth of roaring monsters; how they forced thousands of our young men into their cohorts and made them shed their blood, often far beyond the salt sea!

"Ha, Alemanni of the Black Forest, do you still know how they invited your King Widigab to a banquet and murdered him over the wine-cup? Have you forgotten, Alemanni of the Ebergau, who submitted to them on condition that you should live according to your own laws, how on the smallest pretext, they had your free men scourged by their lictors? Do you still recollect, Alemanni from the Breisgau, how they asked a peaceful passage through your country, and then encamped near the sacred grove of the goddess Ostara, asked permission to visit the aged priest of eighty and his great-granddaughter, the girl of sixteen, in the grove (it was a General and one of their shaven priests, with a hundred warriors), and inquired what was your most sacred thing? And when the maiden unsuspiciously showed the sacred bronze vessels which the gracious goddess had once sent down to you on the rainbow, how they suddenly seized both, and the Christian priest, before the eyes of the unarmed people, shamefully profaned the sacred vessel; how the General slew the venerable priest and dragged the young priestess away to captivity and disgrace, and how their warriors set fire to the sacred grove?

"Do you still remember, men of the Alpgau, how, in the midst of peace, a centurion dishonored your Count's young wife by her own hearthstone, so that she hanged herself by her girdle?

"Have you forgotten how often they have bound our girls together, yes and our boys, too, like beasts of burden, by their long locks, and driven them forth to a life of disgrace from which the pure gods of Asgard turn their faces, crimson with shame and wrath?

"You have not forgotten these things! I hear it! I see it! Well then, do as I advise: Take no prisoners! Kill them all! Do not spare one; disdain all ransom. Let the whole army,--leaders, horse and foot,--be dedicated to Odin and to Zio. You will: I see it! Then repeat the words after me and swear:

"To thee, Odin, doomed,

And to wrathful Zio,

Be all who live within the camp

And on the rocking galleys.

Soon will ye bathe in blood,

O gods so mighty,

From ankle to knee!"